Weekend Reading: The Social Business Ecosystem

This week our contributors shared more pieces of the social business puzzle, reminding us once again (to mix metaphors) that a true social enterprise is like an ecosystem, relying on each element for survival.

Connecting the Social Dots

Nigel Danson (@nigeldanson): It is evident that over the last decade that intranets have dramatically changed and adapted, according to business requirements. The biggest development of intranet evolution is that it’s easier for anyone to upload content, which is great, but has resulted in the modern day intranet flooded with content.

Seth Miller (@millersys_seth): As 2012 comes to a close, it’s safe to say that the modern intranet has become a mission-critical resource for most in mid to enterprise sized organizations. If we were to look at an intranet today and compare it to the 2009, 2006 and 2003 versions within those organizations, the differences would be nothing less than striking in terms of their effectiveness and impact on the overall organization.

Jennifer Mason (@jennifermason): For many years organizations have used SharePoint to create Intranet environments, a single location that can be used as a starting point to obtain all the information needed for employees to complete their work. Because SharePoint offered a rich set of tools that allowed for non-technical users to update the content, it became a platform of choice for many organizations. SharePoint 2013 offers additional functionality that will greatly enhance SharePoint’s capability for providing these types of solutions internally.

Paul Adler (@korteq): The emergence of social business as a new way of working is now mirroring the runaway popularity of platforms such as Facebook with its origins in youth culture. As I’ve been chatting with my kids and their friends, who are taking their first steps into the world of work, it seemed to me that a rich vein of breakthrough thinking may be available to their new employers.

Daniel O'Leary (@danieloleary): I’ve been fascinated by the fact that when I’m online, I can pretty much discover and learn about anything. Get details about what my friends are up to? Check. Browse an extensive encyclopedia with information about everything that’s ever happened? Check. Cat photos? You know it.

Stephen Fishman (@trivoca): I spent last week in Las Vegas and came out a winner. No, not at the craps tables (even though I did walk away up a big $6.00). I spent my time at JiveWorld 2012 and came out ahead in my understanding of where social business is heading and how a bunch of today's sharpest enterprises are benefiting from a deeper level of employee-centric thinking.

Joe Fisher: A pervasive lack of focus is epidemic in today’s workplace, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise. According to the New York Times, the average American worker consumes 34 gigabytes of information and reads 100,000 words in a single day. At the same time, employees are constantly shifting their attention; computer users change windows or check email and other programs an average of 37 times an hour. Multitasking is no longer an art but a norm.

David Diamond (@damsurvival): When you think about how highly we value things like enterprise content sharing and digital asset management, it’s really a wonder our parents were ever able to function in business at all. No ECM, no DAM, no ERM, no CMS -- succeeding in the acronym-starved Dark Ages of Business must have been tough.

Nobody Puts Data in the Corner

Barry Schaeffer: Though often overlooked, there is in today’s information world a battle in progress, between two views of content. The contenders might be called the “rectangular” or database view and the “hierarchical” or XML view, and they influence virtually every decision related to the computerization of information in society. In what follows, we will try to shine some light on this battle, its source and its very real impacts on our information lives.

Mimi Dionne (@cawprhyd): The records retention schedule’s daily use is in decline.

I don’t mean to say that your organization shouldn’t have one — far from it. Every organization should have a records retention schedule safely tucked away in the arms (arsenal?) of the Records and Information Management, Legal and Technology departments. However, Typical End User (TEU) doesn’t want it and won’t use it.

So, Records Manager, how will you respond?

Talking Back

Naresh Sarwan (@damnews): Ed Smith recently wrote an article for CMSWire, "My Other DAM is a Self-Service Intranet Portal," comparing DAM systems to self-service petrol stations where drivers can fill up their cars themselves. While Ed makes some good points, my own experience suggests that self-service isn't a stop and pump solution.

Checking the Customer Experience Forecast

Mark Simpson (@markj_simpson): E-commerce retailers face the constant challenge of standing apart in a vast, churning sea of online competition. It’s not enough to simply stay afloat; the real goal is to own the waters. In other words, while you’d like to stand out enough to grab online visitors’ attention, what you really want is to ferry them through to their final destination: making a purchase.

Virginia Backaitis: The term “Social” means different things to different people. Same for “Big Data” (believe it or not, some people even use it as a verb). And while in one sense their precise definitions don’t matter, if you’re using them as labels, they do. We need some clarification. Now, before their meanings get lost and become irretrievable.

Jim Belosic (@shortstacklab): There is a scientific method that can be applied to monitoring social media. Businesses must first learn about their efforts and then fine tune them to prove their time and money is well spent.

JG Staal: Delivering customer experiences that are engaging, relevant and persuasive is a key competitive advantage in today’s business environment. Recognizing that employees are the driving force that can make or break a great customer experience is the first step. An effective change management initiative is the second step necessary to ensure that employees have the knowledge and structure to deliver.

Bob Clary (@webucator): Do you have an e-Commerce website? If you do, you're most likely using a web analytics tool to gather actionable insight from your current customers. Beyond straight sales numbers, I use the various e-Commerce reports within the Google Analytics interface to determine where our customers are coming from and what marketing campaigns are paying off. I'm going to go through a method I use to help track these items.